Mel Gibson Confirms Sequel to 'Passion of the Christ'

Actor and director Mel Gibson confirmed this week he is working on a sequel to his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ."

"It's called 'The Resurrection.' Of course, that's a very big subject, and it needs to be looked at because we don't want to just do a simple rendering of it," Gibson said during an interview at the SoCal Harvest, a Christian event.

Pastor Greg Laurie spoke with Gibson, who talks about the film shortly before the 1:30 mark of the interview.

"You know, we can all read what happened, but in order to really experience and explore deeper meaning of what it's about it's going to take some doing, and [screenwriter] Randall Wallace is up to the task."

"The Passion" contained graphic scenes of the crucifixion for which it was criticized, but Gibson said he made the film that way in order to show the true sacrifice made by Jesus Christ.

"There's a tendency for all of us to take that event [the crucifixion] and the extent of the sacrifice for granted," he said. "And cinematically it's been sanitized a fair bit, so that it becomes ineffectual, ineffective, not emotional. And I wanted to demonstrate the extent of the sacrifice Christ made."

Wallace said a sequel was in the works during a June interview, noting, "the evangelical community considers 'The Passion' the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood, and they kept telling us that they think a sequel will be even bigger."